Colony Copier

The COLONY COPIER™ is a simple registration accessory for 48, 96 and 384 pin MULTI-BLOT™ Replicators. The COLONY COPIER™ is placed over a Nunc Omni Tray and aligns itself to the external surfaces of the Omni Tray and precisely registers the MULTI-BLOT™ Replicator's stainless steel pins to the interior of the Omni Tray. High density offset arrays of blots or colonies are produced on a single Omni Tray by inoculation at each alignment hole pair using our unique system of guide pins and alignment hole pairs.

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  Inoculate 48 to 1536 Cultures on a Single Agar Plate:

  Screen High Density Grids of Cultures, Genomic DNA or cDNA Libraries on Precut    Membranes:

  Construct & Screen High Density Arrays of:

The COLONY COPIER™ (VP 380) has 2 sets of 9 alignment holes on the front frame (a 3 by 3 array for 48, 96 pin MULTI-BLOT™ Replicators yielding 432 and 864 blots) and 2 sets of 4 alignment holes on the rear frame (a 2 by 2 array for 384 pin MULTI-BLOT™ Replicators yielding 1,536 blots).  The high density COLONY COPIER™ (VP 380D) has 2 sets of the alignment holes on the front frame (a 4 x 4 array for 96 pin MULTI-BLOT™ Replicators yielding 1536 blots and 768 blots for 48 pin MULTI-BLOT™ Replicators). If you are transferring DNA, cDNA or other materials in hydrophobic solutions you will find that our new V&P Pin Cleaning Solution treatment of the pins will greatly increase the precision of delivery.  For an explanation see the FAQ page and the V&P Pin Cleaning Solution page.

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  Transfer Ordered Libraries or Substances to Membranes for Assay:

Microbial cultures can also be inoculated and grown upon a variety of membranes (VP 504-508) notched to fit in the Omni Tray and placed on the surface of nutrient agar, agarose or on a notched wicking paper containing nutrient broth. This latter method is used when material from the agar results in high non-specific background binding to the membrane.

High density blots of substances on notched membranes in Omni Trays are amendable to a wide variety of assay methods. In addition the Omni Tray can be used as an incubation chamber to process the assay.

  Accommodates Wide Variety of Detection Methods:

Libraries of cDNA expression, antigens, antibodies or other substances can be blotted on a membrane in the bottom of an empty Omni Tray and the Omni Tray used to process the membrane for a variety of screening assays including hybridization, ligand binding, antigen or antibody detection.

  Store Working Culture Libraries on Agar

Culture libraries can be inoculated onto agar Omni Trays, grown into colonies and stored in the refrigerator for 7 to 8 weeks. In this format the colonies are used as a working reference library, and the master library is spared frequent freeze/thaw cycles that may decrease culture viability and increase the risk of contamination. You can access the colony library by simply using the replicator to "pick" the colonies and transfer them to your test media or solid substrate. Usually there is enough colony transferred that you do not have to wait for the cultures to grow.

  Method Used with Pin Tools and Colony Copiers to
  Make Synthetic Genetic Arrays

Article can be viewed here.

  Pick Clones from Screening Plates with a 384 Pin Replicator

Whole libraries can also be screened in mass and colonies or plaques "picked" in mass from Omni Trays with the 384 pin MULTI-BLOT™ Replicator registered to a COLONY COPIER™. This procedure is far more efficient and superior to individually picking colonies or plaques with tooth picks. We recommend the VP 384 Replicator because of its larger pin size.

  1536 Colonies

High Density Array (1536 Colonies) of Pigmented Bacteria on Omni Tray

 
  VP 380 - COLONY COPIER

Click here for a list of published articles that cite using the products on this page.